You know it’s time for your business to grow, but you’re completely stuck on how to get there, and you’re wondering what your next steps should be.
Two-thirds of the fastest growing companies end up failing, often because they’re missing the must-have combination of efficiency and innovation. You need both, simultaneously, for your growth to be successful. There’s no way around it: your business absolutelyneeds a growth strategy if you want to grow effectively. Strategic planning is essential, period.
Here’s what you need to know if you plan on growing your company in 2019.
Challenges of Growing Your Business Without a Plan
Does that mean you cannotgrow without a strategy? No. Some companies find a way to muddle through. It doesmean you won’t have the most cost-efficient or effective growth strategy, though. We’re assuming you want to do more than just get by.
To create a growth plan, you need an understanding of your company processes, along with the systems and data that support them. When you know which technologies aren’t seeing positive results – maybe they’re disappointing clients or falling short of satisfaction goals – you’ll be empowered to find solutions.
If you’re trying to grow and you’re not taking stock of key business processes and enabling technologies, you’re creating some potential problems for your organization, ranging from security gaps to inefficiencies to critical failures at inopportune times.
7 Elements of an Effective Growth Strategy
Your growth strategy should include information about your market and how you plan to use technology.
Here are 7 questions to get you started:
- Who are the key decision makers in your target market?
- What are their top strategic concerns?
- How can you best address their top concerns?
- What is your current technology budget, and expected annual budget increase percentage?
- What strategic initiatives can you leverage technology for?
- Are you proactively managing your technology needs, including security, business continuity, and routine maintenance?
- Are you including the need to refresh technology by its end of life cycle?
To break all this down, it’s helpful to have a process diagram for your business. By doing this it will give you an idea of which technologies you need and how to use them to ensure success.
4 Reasons the Cloud is a Good Growth Strategy
Trying to grow your business without a technology plan is futile.
It’s not unheard of for businesses to find themselves bumping into unexpectedly steep financial hurdles through the process. Adding one more staff member means you need to purchase an additional server, for example. Or, increasing revenues requires processing credit cards and now you’re required to adhere to Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) regulations.
When you leverage the capabilities of the cloudand other service platforms, you’ll be able to keep your business resilient and stable as you grow. In fact, there are significant benefits found for small businesses who migrate apps and data to the cloud as part of their growth strategy.
You get better security and compliance that’s easier to wield.First, a little myth-busting. Though the general concept of cloud has long been rumored to be an unsecured environment, it truly depends on what platform you use. Microsoft, for example, has several security features that can make your cloud environment ten-times more secure and offers quick insights with tools like the Security Score and Compliance Manager.
You gain access to big data that makes sense.Analytics are not just for the Fortune 500. Through Microsoft Office 365 and other cloud tools, the cloud delivers in-depth analytics and powerful insights that can help you adjust to customer needs at the speed that they expect it. Analytics are not as complex as they might sound, either. And they can help level the playing field.
Your team can improve collaboration and work remotely.By taking files and applications out of the confines of the hard drive, collaboration can happen faster, and people can work from anywhere. Microsoft Office 365 and Skype for Business are making innovation more accessible to small businesses everywhere.
You can scale your infrastructure more affordably.Not the most exciting sounding benefit, but with the staggering costs of onsite infrastructure and the increasing demands placed on your company’s technology by growth, it makes sense for a lot of companies to shift to a more manageable per-user cost model. At the same time, shifting infrastructure to the cloud grants access to consistently up-to-date hardware and software. It eliminates the scenario of hobbling along on a 10-year-old server because you just can’t squeeze a new server out of your budget.
How Deerwood Technologies Can Help Your Company Grow
IT can be complex, especially when it comes to scaling your business and your IT infrastructure along with it.
We work with you to understand your business goals and help map out a technology plan that matches, using our industry expertise and years of experience. By helping you take advantage of all the tools and technologies, we can help make your growth a success. Contact us to get started.